Our weekly program, Missouri State Journal, is a collaboration between KSMU Radio and Missouri State University. It's hosted and produced by MSU's Office of Strategic Communication, and it airs each Tuesday morning at 9:45 on KSMU.
In this episode of our local program Making Democracy Work, Amanda Stadler speaks with Jessica Luraas, director of Safe to Sleep Women’s Emergency Shelter and case management at Crosslines.
Can you kind of give us just the Safe to Sleep one on one for folks that might not be familiar with it?
Luraas: Safe to Sleep is an emergency shelter. We serve women 18 and over, and we are located in Springfield. We are also an overnight shelter only.
And so, there's big changes coming to Safe to Sleep. So, can you kind of talk us through what what's coming up next?
Luraas: Right now, Safe to Sleep, and for almost the last 15 years, we have been in a church gym. So, every night we set up cots and have to take the cots down in the morning. And the ladies, when they come to the shelter, when they leave in the morning, they have to take their belongings with them because we don't have storage for that. And so, we've been doing that for almost 15 years. And in the next few weeks, we are going to be opening a new shelter in the Crosslines building. And that will give us an opportunity to offer the ladies a lot more services.
Can you talk a little bit more about that, just how having that regular, stable space will change how you're able to serve people?
Luraas: There's a couple really exciting changes. We won't have cots anymore, which is a huge deal. Cots are not comfortable to sleep on, and they're just hard to set up and take down. So, we're just excited to offer permanent, comfortable beds. The beds will also have a partition around them, so when the ladies lay down to sleep, they will have some privacy. They will also have a place to charge their phone and a little reading light, which seem like small things, but is honestly a really big deal just to give them some comfort. And the biggest change will be that they'll be able to leave their belongings because, right now, they have to take everything with them when they leave. So, if they can leave their stuff at the shelter, even though we close during the day, it will be a lot easier for them to go to job interviews, go to doctor's appointments, get on and off of the bus even — so, just navigating daily life in our community will be a lot easier.
It sounds like it'll offer a little more dignity in a way, too, for folks. That's awesome.
One of the other really unique things about Safe to Sleep is the staffing model.
Luraas: At Safe to Sleep, we do have paid staff that stay the night at the shelter, but we also rely on volunteers. So, we cannot open our doors without volunteers, so we always have one paid staff at the shelter overnight, but we also have to have one volunteer.
Can you talk more about that? Like one, what does volunteering look like? And two, if folks maybe want to support, but staying overnight at the shelter isn't for them, what are other ways that they could get involved?
Luraas: Volunteering, we have different shifts. The shelter opens at 7:30 p.m., and so you can come in at 7 p.m. and leave at 10 p.m. and just do an evening shift or you can come in at 7 and stay the entire night. We close at 7:30 in the morning, so you're serving a full 13 hours because of that. We don't ask folks to do more than maybe once or twice a month, but as a volunteer, you are kind of just overseeing the shelter. You're not having to do chores like cleaning bathrooms or sweeping or things like that. You're just ensuring that the ladies are safe and following the rules and kind of overseeing things along with the staff person. It's a really great way to get to know the women that are coming to the shelter, and just the time that you give at Safe to Sleep is highly valued. So, literally every second matters because we could not do what we do without volunteers.
You mentioned that Safe to Sleep has been operating for 15 years, so that's a really huge impact on our community. So, can you talk a little bit about, maybe, the numbers, about how many people you serve each night?
Luraas: Our average number of guests per night is around 35. Our capacity is 50, and we typically don't hit that capacity, but we're usually serving around 35. We serve well over 500 women every year, and since we opened in 2011, we've served over 4,000 individual women.
That's incredible. We'll do one last question, which — if there was one thing just that you wish people knew about your work or the women that you serve, what would that be?
Luraas: I really would like people to know that the ladies that are at the shelter that are experiencing homelessness are really not any different than any of us. One of the things that I think people, when they come to the shelter to volunteer, they see for themselves that our ladies, our average age is 45, so a lot of our women are older. And often you will not be able to tell who is a staff person, who is a volunteer and who is a shelter guest. So, all those stereotypes are pretty much blown out of the water when you come to the shelter and see who we're serving.